Stocks

[GreyGhost]

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What is this? Please explain like I'm a 5 year old.

Hubby is coming into some money and he asked me about buying stock last night, but I know nothing.

You do a quiz that helps determine your risk tolerance, desired return, capacity to take risk, etc. From the answers, the robo advisor can pick investments that try to fit your profile. Much safer than people with little knowledge or interest picking their own.

In the past, people with little money couldn't get good financial advice as the good advisors wanted too much money yearly and the fees would eclipse the gains from advise. Robo-advisors help fill that need.

If robo-advisor doesn't give you confidence, depending on your time frame and use case for the money, XEQT and chill isn't awful. That could also be bad advice if you plan on using the money for something in the near future.

 

[ifiddles]

You do a quiz that helps determine your risk tolerance, desired return, capacity to take risk, etc. From the answers, the robo advisor can pick investments that try to fit your profile. Much safer than people with little knowledge or interest picking their own.

In the past, people with little money couldn't get good financial advice as the good advisors wanted too much money yearly and the fees would eclipse the gains from advise. Robo-advisors help fill that need.

If robo-advisor doesn't give you confidence, depending on your time frame and use case for the money, XEQT and chill isn't awful. That could also be bad advice if you plan on using the money for something in the near future.

thanks for that...we sold his rental last summer which he jointly owned with his mom (2 semis) so this is the remainder after his mom paid capital gains on her portion...no idea how much he's thinking of 'playing' with but I'm definitely a GIC type of girl I'll look into this a bit more before helping him decide...oh, we retire in 2 years and honestly, he doesn't have much (other than what he received from selling his rental last year) and CPP at 60 sucks so I'd rather he not play with it...

 

[mimico_polak]

thanks for that...we sold his rental last summer which he jointly owned with his mom (2 semis) so this is the remainder after his mom paid capital gains on her portion...no idea how much he's thinking of 'playing' with but I'm definitely a GIC type of girl I'll look into this a bit more before helping him decide...oh, we retire in 2 years and honestly, he doesn't have much (other than what he received from selling his rental last year) and CPP at 60 sucks so I'd rather he not play with it...

I’m a big proponent of VGRO or VBAL as safe investments.

In your 60s I’d push toward VBAL as it’s a less risky investment and more conservative approach.

I’ll transition all my VGRO to VBAL around 55 years old or so.

 

[GreyGhost]

thanks for that...we sold his rental last summer which he jointly owned with his mom (2 semis) so this is the remainder after his mom paid capital gains on her portion...no idea how much he's thinking of 'playing' with but I'm definitely a GIC type of girl I'll look into this a bit more before helping him decide...oh, we retire in 2 years and honestly, he doesn't have much (other than what he received from selling his rental last year) and CPP at 60 sucks so I'd rather he not play with it...

Obviously we don't know the whole picture and aren't licensed to give financial advice but given your paragraph, I would strongly advise doing what you could to push CPP to 70. That gives him almost double the monthly payments for life. To accomplish that, he may need to burn through the rental property money to live in the meantime. When that close to retirement, ideally you have at at least two years of necessary spending (and potentially up to five) that can't go down (a combination of high interest savings, gics, bonds, etc). Given your DB pension, that may not be a huge number as your pension can do a lot of work. The path for the rest of the money is partially determined by how much there is. Conceptually, you want the rest to be invested in something with a decent (but not guaranteed) chance to grow faster than inflation. In years where this bucket is up, you pull from it. In years where it's down, you pull from your safer bucket to give the second bucket time to recover. As this method already has the safety built into bucket one, I like foot to the floor on bucket two (something like XEQT, VT, etc).

I'd strongly recommend retaining a fee for service advisor asap. Having them prepare a plan for both of you costs ~$4000 but can easily save you tens or hundreds of thousands by helping you make the right choices (which aren't always obvious like spending all your money now instead of starting CPP at 60). It also gives you comfort as a good plan shows how much money you can safely spend each year and where it is coming from. They can also help him with a plan for the current cash influx (likely max TFSA's first, after that RRSP vs non-reg depends a lot on current income). If you want the $50 version, Adviice lets you do it yourself but while I am using that to run scenarios for myself, I am still going to pay someone that does this for a living to make sure I didn't miss something important.

EDIT:
As for his desire to play in the market. Do that with a percentage if he must (5-10%). Never refill that bucket. Keep that money in a different brokerage to make it clear that it is distinct and not to be co-mingled. If it grows to 1M, good for him. If he loses it all, it didn't change the path through your life all that much. If you refill that bucket after a loss, it is easy to get to a place where all the money is gone.

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